


Kaishakunin

by sphinx01



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Developing Friendships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Suicide Attempt, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:34:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23633182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sphinx01/pseuds/sphinx01
Summary: If Cyan decided to plunge the blade in now, there’d be nothing Sabin could do about it.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	Kaishakunin

**Kaishakunin**

**xxx**

To the north, the Phantom Forest is but a dark streak against the pale evening sky. They’ve covered a good 50 miles in the last two days, and yet Cyan is sure that he can hear the echo of a train whistle fading away in the distance.

The ground, though grassy, feels hard and unforgiving beneath him as he kneels down. Self-control. Compassion. Righteousness. Cyan is, by now, convinced that the samurai code of honor was penned by someone who had never witnessed their spouse vomiting blood in her death throes, or felt their child’s body growing cold and stiff in their arms.

Cold winds whip across the plain and cut into his face, making his eyes water. He failed. Pure and simple. He’d sworn a solemn oath of protection to his king, his country and his family, and he broke that promise. That’s all there is to it.

There is but one way a samurai can cleanse himself from such dishonor. The knife lies comfortably in Cyan’s hand, smooth and familiar.

He wonders, in a strangely detached, clinical way, how much this will hurt. _You have made me so happy_ , Elayne’s voice whispers in his mind. Gods, if only she can forgive him… He closes his eyes.

“Cyan?”

He draws a sharp breath, his eyes flying open again. This can only be a cruel trick some ungracious deity has decided to play on him. His fingers clench around the knife’s heft. “Sir Sabin,” he rasps out, “I beg thee, keep thy distance for a while.” Maybe, for once, the younger man will do as told.

No such luck. Footsteps are drawing closer, and Sabin asks: “You okay there?”

Cyan refuses to look up when the younger man comes to a hold right next to him. He just stares ahead, the knife’s tip poised against his abdomen, until his vision blurs.

There is no sound but the wind, and the silence stretches, so much so that he begins to wonder if he has somehow missed Sabin leaving.

He hasn’t. There’s movement, and a moment later Sabin steps into his line of sight and kneels down in seiza, mirroring Cyan’s posture. The last errant shafts of sunlight tinge his croppy hair golden, but his face is as serious as Cyan has ever seen it. Sabin reaches out, calm and unhurried, and takes hold of Cyan’s upper hand.

“No,” he says simply.

Cyan feels his jaw drop. Sabin’s fingers are burning hot on his own - when have his hands become so cold? The younger man’s grip is sure, but it’s a token gesture at best. If Cyan decided to plunge the blade in now, there’d be nothing Sabin could do about it. And yet there he sits, holding Cyan’s fingers captive and telling him no as if he had a say in the matter.

Anger surges in Cyan’s chest. “Thou hast no right -“

“No,” Sabin cuts in, and it takes all of Cyan’s willpower not to flinch. True anger is not an emotion he has thus far attributed to the younger man, short as their acquaintance might be, but it’s clearly there now, in the sharpness of his voice and the look on his face, with all the subtlety of a thunderstorm.

“I won’t let you run away like this,” Sabin says.

Cyan struggles to parse the meaning of that sentence. How can he be running away when he’s trying to atone for his failures the only way he knows how? “Thou… thou dost not understand…” His chest feels hot, constricted.

Very gently, Sabin extricates the knife’s heft from his fingers. Cyan’s first impulse is to tighten his grip, but the whole scene has the peculiar quality of a fever dream: He sees the movement, _feels_ it, but his reactions are too sluggish to keep up. His hands are trembling, he realizes. Why does he feel so weak?

The sharp blade rests in Sabin’s upturned palms, carefully balanced, as if Cyan had handed it to him as a gift. The younger man bows his head in a gesture of respect before he places the knife onto the ground next to them, cautious and without haste. A small part of Cyan feels grateful that Sabin will at least treat a samurai’s weapon with a semblance of veneration, if not the samurai himself.

A soul-deep weariness settles upon him. He has no answer to the determination the younger man evinces, and even the act of drawing air into his lungs suddenly seems like an unreasonable effort.

Whatever Sabin sees in Cyan’s face makes his gaze soften. He shifts into a cross-legged position, and this time Cyan does flinch when the younger man reaches out to touch his hand. It’s the barest brush of fingertips, though, and Sabin seems unimpressed by the reaction. He simply sits up a bit straighter, takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

Cyan comes within an inch of laughing out loud when he recognizes the pattern Sabin’s breathing falls into. This is one of the most basic meditation techniques there is, one he himself has taught to many an aspiring young samurai. One he has miserably failed at the last few nights when he tried to meditate. His mind had filled with the gruesome images of his misdoings, and he’d fled from his own thoughts like the coward he is.

But there’s no knife in his hand anymore, and that means this young man the gods have seen fit to give him as a companion is the only thing left for him to orient himself by. He lets his eyes drift shut, resigned to his fate simply because he lacks the strength to think of anything else he might do.

The silence fills with the quiet sounds of Sabin’s breathing, the darkness with the sensation of his calm, unobtrusive presence. It is… surprisingly calming. Easy to sink into.

The wind picks up again, and the chill it sends down Cyan’ spine breaks his concentration. He opens his eyes - only to be greeted by semi-darkness. The fading orange-gold of the sunset has been replaced by a star-strewn sky with a crescent moon rising in the east. Sabin is still there, obviously unperturbed by the cold despite the lack of something that might be called a shirt. The light of the camp fire reaches just far enough to illuminate his features and darken his ice blue eyes to a rich sapphire. He smiles and unfolds his legs.

“I’ll go make some tea,” he says, standing and stretching his arms above his head with a sigh. “You come when you’re ready.” His hand brushes Cyan’s shoulder in passing, and then he’s gone, his retreating steps soft on the grass.

Cyan sits motionless and tries to understand what just happened.

His gaze falls onto the knife that is still lying by his side. The blade gleams silver in the combined lights of fire and moon, impossible to miss, and the notion that Sabin simply forgot about it is ludicrous. He has to have left it on purpose.

Somewhere behind him, Cyan can hear the younger man whistle a merry tune and clatter with whatever equipment he is unpacking. He reaches for the knife, pushes it back into his belt and rises, a little stiff, to join his companion by the fire.

The gods, it seems, still have things for him to do.

_***Fin*** _

**Author's Note:**

>  _Kaishakunin_ : a person who assists a samurai in performing ritual suicide.


End file.
